Listen Up!

The other night an experience with my little Malte-poo Eddy gave me reason to be really grateful, once again, that I perceive dog behavior through the lens of Dialogue® and respond to that behavior accordingly.

I was eating dinner with a friend. Eddy is usually very mannerly at such times. He’ll ask what we are doing, and when I tell him that I’m busy eating and he’s all right, he usually lies down quietly at my feet to wait it out. This evening, however, he was very agitated. He repeatedly went through the kitchen to the utility room, barked a time or two there, ran back into his room (my dogs have a whole room in my present situation–they adopted it on their own, and they love it), stood in the doorway looking toward the utility room and barked a few more sharp “alarm” barks. In between runs he would stand and look intently at me, obviously looking for help. This routine was repeated several–too many–times as I was too busy talking to my friend to get my mind in gear. I just called out “you’re all right” each time. At least I knew better than to scold and tell him to be quiet. But how I was ignoring all the principles of the best dog communication, the communication we can have with our dogs…true Dialogue®!

When I’d finished eating, I happen to walk through the kitchen to the utility room. It was then that I saw the big folded dog food bag and remembered that I’d put it there on the floor right before dinner. It was one of those glossy bags. Well, the presence of that shiny foreign object was just more than Eddy’s security level could cope with. I took the bag in my hands and knelt on the floor with it, showing it to Eddy. He very cautiously approached it, but he really just wanted it to go away. So after a minute of encouraging him to approach it and sniff it, I removed it from the room.

I felt badly that because of my preoccupation with dinner, and my lapse of memory, that I had caused Eddy to feel worried and upset for a half hour when he could have been happily lying by my feet. I wish I’d been more “tuned in” and investigated the area where Eddy was running to and fro when he first began his agitated runs and barks. I’ll do better next time. However, this incident did remind me of how absolutely key it is that we humans humbly agree to never scold or punish. A knee-jerk reaction to scold in order to get Eddy to chill out and be quiet would have definitely been tantamount to cruelty!  The dog anxiety he was feeling was no fun at all for him, and it’s up to us to be alert, aware and to mitigate the circumstances that are upsetting our dogs, not scold them for their fear reactions.